My hand hovers over the screen before I swipe it away. It’s easier not to open it. Easier to pretend it’s just another work thing and not the possibility of seeing him again.
I press my forehead against the steering wheel and close my eyes. The engine hums softly, and somewhere outside, the sound of footsteps crosses the pavement—faint, rhythmic, seeming familiar. For a second, it’s like the past folds over the present, the edges of both too close to separate.
I draw a long breath and let it out slowly.
When I finally drive off, the lot is almost empty. The wipers drag across the windshield in slow arcs, the streetlights flashing in and out. My face flickers faintly in the glass—professional, composed, the woman who handles everything.
The woman everyone thinks moved on.
At a red light, I glance up at the mirror. My face looks fine. Normal. Unbothered.
I almost believe it.
But the ache doesn’t go anywhere. It just shifts, quiet, patient, still there.
Maybe Ellie’s right. I never stopped loving Jace. I just got better at hiding it.
The light turns green. I drive home through the drizzle, the city around me soft and half-asleep.
I built a life that looks like moving on, but it keeps pulling me back to where I started.
Chapter Nine
Old Friends, New Tension
Jace
The rain hasn’t let up. It leaves the pavement slick outside the university event center, catching the glow of the glass doors and the shimmer of every polished car that pulls into the loop.
Inside, the air hums with low jazz and polite laughter. It’s smooth and practiced, the kind that belongs to people who know what to say at fundraisers.
I’m not one of them.
My collar’s too tight. My tie’s already crooked. The assistant coaches beside me blend right in, loose smiles, handshakes, andconfidence that looks natural. I manage a nod here, a ‘good to see you’ there, but it feels like wearing a suit that doesn’t fit.
A woman from the communications team waves us toward the check-in table. That’s when I see Sarah.
Clipboard in hand, name badge pinned neatly to the neckline of a dark green dress that catches the light when she moves. It’s simple and elegant, and somehow it makes everything around her fade a little. She’s laughing at something Ellie says, head tilted slightly, her confidence so effortless it hurts to look at. Her lipstick’s darker than I remember, but her smile… that’s the same.
She looks like she belongs here. And somehow, that makes me feel like I don’t.
For half a second, her gaze flicks across the room and it almost stops on me. My breath catches, stupidly, like muscle memory. Then she looks away, her expression smoothing over so fast it could’ve been my imagination.
“Man,” one of the trainers mutters beside me, “they went all out this year.”
“Guess that’s what alumni donations are for,” I say, voice even.
What I don’t say is that she’s the reason the department’s reputation hasn’t tanked since the whole press-conference mess. She knows how to pull a team back from the edge, and if I’m being honest, I owe her one.
A few minutes later, Ethan’s voice cuts through the noise. “Well, I’ll be damned. You clean up nice, Prescott.”
Ethan is here as one of tonight's guest honorees, an alumni who’s living proof that the program’s pipeline actually works. He’s a prime example of what we can achieve.
I turn just as he and Emma are stepping through the doors, shaking off umbrellas. Ethan’s in a charcoal suit that probably costs more than my truck and Emma’s in a black dress. It’s simple and stunning. The whole room feels lighter when she smiles.
A year ago, none of this existed. Our wedding didn’t just change their lives, it cracked open a door that brought us all back as one. It forced us to acknowledge that time had reshaped our lives, instead of pretending it hadn’t. Making it somehow the beginning instead of the end.
Ethan claps me on the shoulder, grin wide. “Didn’t think I’d see the day you volunteered for small talk and tiny appetizers.”
